Tipped workers often face different minimum wages.

The article can be found here.

   This article is about how tipped workers are struggling to make minimum wage and their federal minimum wage hasn't increased since 1991. The idea is that (as we all know) the tips they make on top of their low minimum wage (often ranging between 4 and 5 dollars) are supposed to bring their pay up to the minimum wage that everyone else is entitled to. The amount they will make in tips is unpredictable and there are some restaurant owners who will take portions of the tips. It also talks about low-wage advocates, some of the states raising their minimum wage, and how the Senate Democrats would like to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 in 2014.

   These low-wage workers definitely deserve a raise in their minimum wage. Ideally, I think that their minimum wage should be the same as ours and tips should be a reward on top of that. Often times, many of us do not realize how important fair tips are for these people. Maybe a good solution to this ignorance on our part is to add the price of the tip to the service we are seeking. So that way, rather than separating the two prices, they are combined and standard so that it isn't up to us to calculate (because we Americans are quite lazy...) and these people aren't relying solely on the customer's "generosity" to give them a reasonable tip. I think that the federal government raising the minimum wage is definitely a good step in the right direction.  And maybe years down the road it won't be a separation between "low-wage worker's minimum wage" and "state minimum wage", it'll all be one set minimum wage (preferably at a livable wage).